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Messers Kerchner was not a carpenter.

Oh sure, like most men of his era I’m sure necessity dictated he be a handy guy around the house — dependable repair services were likely scarce in the Thirties and I’m pretty sure Sears Hardware was closed on weekends.

The simple stuff he could handle. Pet canary peck a hole in the plaster? Wallpaper peeling in the bedroom? That damn furnace acting up again? No problem. Like most wives, Mrs. Kerchner had a lengthy ‘honey do’ list she henpecked poor Messers over and when he wasn’t hanging out over at the Moose lodge or ‘hunting’ with the guys he would get to it, promise.

But finish carpentry? No. The gap between fine craftsman and weekend warrior hasn’t changed much in the last 100 years, and Messers was no Bob Villa.

I know this because I live in the house Messers built.

Downers Grove is believed to host one of the nation’s largest collections of Sears-Roebuck Catalog kit homes, most built between 1908 and 1940.

As insane as it may seem now, it was assumed that the average Joe (or Messers) of the time could assemble his own home with little more than a hammer, saw and the ability to turn a screwdriver. One could also assume that do-it-yourself home assembly required the patience of Job and a steady stream of rock-gut moonshine, this being the days before power tools and Home Depot.

Somehow the Messerses of the age managed just fine. Most of them.

Sometime in the fall of 1922, Messers kissed his wife on the cheek and made the first of what was likely hundreds of trips to the rail yard near the recently extended Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, and began to load up the more than 30,000 individually cataloged and labeled pieces of lumber that would soon become their home.

A Sears catalog ‘kit’ home, the ‘Cornell’ model on page 61 of the Sears Home catalog of 1920. The home that, in an unimaginable moment of naïveté, I purchased in Spring 2004, eight decades after the last of the creaky floorboards were clumsily hammered into place.

Did I mention that Messers was not a carpenter?

I’ve read a few books dedicated to the history of the Sears Catalog Home (thin volumes, all), and the emotional attachment the current owners feel about sharing a unique piece of sturdy American craftsmanship.

Sometimes I get emotional about my house. It usually involves uncontrollable fits of rage and hysterical laughter every time I open a wall and discover that the short in the outlet was caused by a frayed cloth wire coming in contact with the beer can pull-tab that was holding it against the joist. Messers enjoyed combining alcohol and home repair. Actually that’s something we have in common.

I think he was a short man. I assumed this when I smacked my forehead squarely into the ceiling as I was navigating a queen box spring up the stairs into what would soon be our bedroom. Try as we might, the box spring would advance no further than the second stair, so a full-sized bed it was.

It’s just one of the many concessions we’ve been forced to accept in order to live in Messer’s house, although somewhere between the 123 and 125 time I smacked my head into the ceiling while half asleep, I grabbed a claw hammer and smashed the overhang into a pile of plaster rubble and shattered lathe.

Thankfully, we have a contractor on speed dial and, with another dip into our dwindling savings, we now have a queen-size bed in our bedroom. I wonder if Messers would approve, or would he think us vain? The previous owner lived here 20 years. He’s taller than me, which means for approximately half his life he instinctively ducked his head E-VAA-REE TIME he went up and down the stairs. Apparently he didn’t own a claw hammer.

We’ve found little scraps of Messers’ life every year in our home: copies of the Daily News from 1925, postcards addressed to him and his lovely wife ‘E’, rail-tags on old fixtures and lumber stamped with his name and an assembly number identifying where it should be installed.

I’ve discovered many ‘Part #126-F hammered into Part #634-L, while Part #127-F is holding up the furnace downstairs. I guessing he lost the instruction manual and rather than face the wrath of Mrs. Kerchner (“I knew it! You’d loose your pants if I didn’t hand you your belt! What else have you lost?!? Well? I bet Mrs. Nesbit’s husband knows where his manual is! Maybe I should call him over to finish the house!! Messers I swear by God..”) he just winged it. Come to think of it we have that in common, too.

I’ve lost track of how many times a contractor has scratched his head and said “Wow! Never seen that before.” Messers had a sense of humor. When we refinished the scary basement we found that the main line that carried the plumbing into the house from the street was propped off the basement floor by a coffee can perched atop a cinder block.

When we removed the can (Hills Brothers), the line cracked and, since it was made of lead, had to be replaced all the way out to the curb. Our neighbors still recall the summer of 2007 as the year the cicadas returned and the moron across the street had the city break up the parkway and half the street. I still have that can.

I’ll admit to a few sentimental moments in Messers’ house. During the Basement ‘Big Dig’ Project (as it came to be known) we converted the old root cellar into a pantry/wine cellar. Originally we called that space the ‘room where the bad kids go’ because it was cold 4’ x 8’ space with a low ceiling and jagged chunks of grey masonry sticking out from the walls.

Messers had built a row of floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves from scrap lumber undoubtedly left over from combining Part #126-F into Part #634-L. Like most of his handiwork, no two pieces lined up at the same angle and the entire assemblage shrugged like it felt shame over its own existence.

Still, he did take the time to paint it all a lovely shade of flesh and it served us well as a storage place for our dog’s dry food. I actually felt a moment of compassion for it just before I swung the sledgehammer down the first time. It got easier after that.

Sometimes I fantasize about discovering a rusty old toolbox hidden behind a wall somewhere, filled with the life savings Messers wouldn’t entrust to a bank. I did find some old bones wrapped in cloth once. I’m pretty sure they were too small to be human, then again, I’m no doctor.

The misaligned trim, the water damage, the nightmarish black tangle of fraying electrical wires, hidden and spreading like a ghost behind the walls, I can’t blame it all on poor Messers (or ‘Mess’ as I suspect his friends called him).

There have been three other families who lived in his house before we arrived and I know for a fact none of them were carpenters either. I think the difference is that they all learned to accept (overlook??) the irregularities in Messers’ handiwork, some of them no doubt contributing some of their own. I admire them. I wish I could look past the trim that isn’t mitre cut or those damn counterweights that make opening a window sound like a garbage truck falling off the Sears tower.

I want to be like them, oblivious to the faults. I want to refer to cracked plaster as ‘charm’ and creaking floorboards as ‘character’, it just hasn’t happened for me. Honestly after four years of almost non-stop restoration, there isn’t a whole lot of Messers left in his house — and I don’t feel any real affection for what remains.

However, I do feel a sense of loss at having never met the man in person. I think I would have liked him. We could have sat down in the backyard over a metal rain-tub full of cold Schlitz on ice and swapped stories of home improvement misadventures, and how expensive screws are now versus 1924. I could show off my power tools, I could introduce him to that wondrous tool called a ‘level’ that ensures that everything magically lines up evenly. He would be impressed. After all, I think we have allot in common.

You see, Messers Kerchner was no carpenter.

And neither am I.

Meat is a resident of Downers Grove. He lives in Messers’ house,  a 1924 Sears Catalog Home, lovingly built by Messers himself.

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